The expected recruiting drive, which mirrors Kiev’s own
mobilization order by President Petro Poroshenko last month, will
be officially launched next week, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the
head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, told a
local news station.

“As for mobilization, conscription, we are capable of doing
it,” he said, adding that the troops would be involved in a
counteroffensive against Kiev forces.

“We plan to form five new brigades, three of them mechanized.
We have the basis to train the soldiers. I believe we can do it
by springtime,” he added.

The official later clarified that they plan to recruit more
volunteers, rather than to enforce conscription, and that the
training may take as long as six months.

Reports from on the ground indicate that logistic structures of
the rebels are only partially functional, and that conducting a
full-blown conscription campaign amid ongoing hostilities may be
too complex. Enrolling and training “up to 100,000
soldiers,” as declared initially by Zakharchenko, is clearly
an impossible goal in the war-torn region that saw hundreds of
thousands of people fleeing in the past several months.

Kiev officials cheered the news, saying it indicated impending
doom for the militias.

“We are still checking it, but it indicates that they are
short of fighters,” Kiev military spokesman Andrey Lysenko
told at a daily briefing.

Ukraine’s own mobilization campaign, the fourth since the armed
coup in Kiev brought to power the current government in February
2014, is reportedly stalled because potential recruits are
dodging conscription officials. Hundreds of Ukrainian men are
choosing to flee the country rather than be enrolled.

The violence between government troops and anti-government
militias escalated in January. The rebels fended off what Kiev
described as a “massive offensive” and scored several territorial
gains.

‘Kiev not ready to talk peace’ – rebel leaders on Minsk talks
failure

The heads of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk have
issued a joint statement, in which they blamed Kiev for the
failure of the latest round of peace talks on Saturday.

“The negotiations in Minsk turned out fruitless and were
thwarted solely due to the fault of the Ukrainian side,”
said the leaders of the republics, Aleksandr Zakharchenko (DPR)
and Igor Plotnitsky (LPR).

They reminded reporters that it was Kiev which reignited
hostilities in January, saying that “it was [Ukrainian
president, Petro] Poroshenko, who gave the public order to start
offensive across the whole frontline.”

At the same time, Kiev has blamed the rebels for sabotaging the
talks, as they were unable to send officials with a high enough
rank to Minsk in order to sign a new agreement.

Ukraine was backed by the OSCE, which stressed that the DPR and
LPR representatives, Denis Pushilin and Vladislav Deynego, in the
Belarusian capital “weren’t even prepared to discuss the
implementation of a ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy
weapons."

Zakharchenko and Plotnitsky argued that their envoys Pushilin and
Deynego had “all the powers” to agree a ceasefire deal,
which “was publically confirmed by the decrees signed by the
heads of the DPR and LPR.”

“It’s Kiev, which isn’t ready to talk. It’s Poroshenko, who
rushes back and forth and is afraid to take responsibility,”
they said.

The DPR and LPR heads once again turned down Kiev’s offer to
bring back the disengagement line agreed by the sides in
September last year.

“Why would we do that? To see our cities shelled again? To
see more defenseless people, women, elderly and children killed?
No, gentlemen, forget about it. You’re suffering yet another
military defeat right now,” they said addressing the
Ukrainian leadership.

Both Zakharchenko and Plotnitsky stressed they want a peaceful
solution to the conflict and are ready to resume talks with the
other side.

“We don’t need blood. We’re ready to stop, but only at the
line where we are now. We won’t betray the memory of our
brothers-in-arms and peaceful civilians, who died in January…we
demand Kiev return to the table and start negotiating,” they
said.

The violence between government troops and anti-government
militias escalated in January. The rebels fended off what Kiev
described as a “massive offensive” and scored several territorial
gains.

The focus of the current hostilities is the area around the city
of Debaltsevo, a stronghold of Ukrainian troops deep inside the
rebel-held part of the country. Some 8,000 troops stationed in
the area are at risk of being cut off from supply lines and
suffering a major defeat.

Moscow is skeptical about the prospect of a new ceasefire,
blaming Washington for not pressuring Kiev into seeking peace
rather than continuing the war.

“Elsewhere in the world, our Western partners are calling for
dialogue between the authorities and the opposition. Everywhere
in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan. But Ukraine is for some
reason an exception. Western colleagues say that in Ukraine the
most important thing is to support Kiev’s actions,” Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a media conference in China.

He added that apparently Washington plans to “maintain its
unconditional support” of whatever Kiev does, even though “it
apparently took a course towards a purely military suppression of
the conflict.”

Russian president Vladimir Putin expressed his concern over the
situation in Donbass and called on both sides involved in the
conflict to stop the war, the president’s press secretary, Dmitry
Peskov, told TASS.

The civil war in eastern Ukraine has claimed more than 5,000
civilian lives, according to the latest UN count.